I had to walk home alone on Wednesday because Eva was doing some casual loitering by her new crush’s locker. I’d just left school when it started to pour down rain. It was early fall, when it rarely rained, so I didn’t have an umbrella or even a jacket with me. Within seconds, I was soaked.
A car pulled up alongside me. “Want a ride?” Dominic Gray was behind the wheel.
“No thanks,” I replied. “Don’t you have some groupie to bug?”
“But I want to bug you,” he said. “C’mon, please get in.” He asked with a devastating smile and I couldn’t help but smile back.
“Well, it’s better than drowning,” I said. “But just barely.”
He let out a snort of laughter. I didn’t say anything as we drove, but I noticed that he seemed to know where to take me.
“How did you find out where I live?” I asked him as we turned onto my street. He parked the car in front of my house before he answered me.
“I asked Eva,” he said. “She’s your best friend, right?”
“She is,” I said. “But why did you want to know?”
“Look, I know I acted like a jerk the other night,” he said. “I wanted to tell you I was sorry. That’s all. I’m not stalking you or anything.”
“Apology accepted,” I said, because he seemed sincere. “And thanks for the ride.” For some unfathomable reason, I wanted to prolong our conversation. It couldn’t be that I had noticed his bright blue eyes, could it?
“Thanks for hearing me out,” he replied. “I’d love to talk more, but I’m supposed to meet Aunt Katrina and I’m late.”
“I’ve got to go, too,” I said. “Guitar lesson.”
“Guitar lesson?” he asked. “When did you take that up? When you met me?”
The question seemed hostile and it dawned on me that he thought I had taken up the guitar to get closer to him.
I stared at him. “You do have a fat head, don’t you?”
“I just meant—” he started to explain.
“I know what you meant,” I said. “For your information, I’ve been playing the guitar for three years.” I didn’t wait for a reply, but got out of the car and slammed the door, hard.
I ran up the driveway to the house. I was going to be late for my lesson and it was all Dominic’s fault.
I grabbed an umbrella and my guitar case and then ran all the way to my guitar teacher’s house. I was late and Ms. Minerva already stood at her door. “You know the rules,” she said. “One minute more and I was going to cancel your session.”
She was the best teacher in Nightshade and she had kids who were just waiting to snag my spot. “I’m sorry!” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Well, then, let’s get started,” she said. “I thought I’d teach you a new song today.”
The first part of my lesson went well, but my attention drifted. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dominic, which irritated me to no end.
“Jessica, pay attention!”
My fingers tangled in the chord and I broke a string.
Ms. Minerva scolded me at the end of my lesson, which only made my mood worse. I blamed that on Dominic, too. He’d been sweet when he’d apologized, but then implied that I was chasing him. I wondered who the real Dominic was. Charming nice guy or sullen rock star?
I ran into Connor as I left Ms. Minerva’s house. He was coming up the walk as I was going down.
“Hi, Jessica,” he said. “How was the lesson?” His brown hair was matted with rain, but he was still smiling.
Connor was a sophomore, played in the school’s jazz quartet, and was one of the nicest guys I knew.
“She’s in a mood, so watch out.” I started to walk away, but Connor kept talking.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said.
The rain was turning my hair into a mass of frizz, but I waited for him to finish his thought. And waited.
He finally gulped it out. “Do you want to catch a movie sometime?”
“Sure,” I said, still thinking about my hair and Dominic and how my day generally sucked. “Eva’s been begging me to go see Night of the Living Dead at that theater that shows classic movies. Maybe we could all go?”
“Uh, that would be nice, but I was thinking just the two of us.” He looked at me meaningfully as he said it.
I finally realized what he was getting at. “Oh!”
His smile disappeared.
“Um, I mean, I’d love to, but you’d better get inside,” I said. “Or you’ll be late.”
His smile reappeared. “I’ll call you later,” he called out as he dashed up the steps.
Had I just agreed to go on a date with Connor? He was cute, but he wasn’t exactly who I’d been thinking of. I banished the thought of a pair of blue eyes and an amazing voice.
The rain had turned to a light mist by the time I made it home. Eva was sitting on my front porch, wearing an oversized raincoat, with an umbrella over her head. “Jessica,” she said, “I was wondering when you were going to come home. I was just about to look for you.”
“Here I am.”
“You won’t believe what I just found out,” she said. “Remember that creepy guy who tried to give us the fliers?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. My mind was still on my disastrous day.
“You’ll never guess who he is!”
“Who?”
“Are you even paying attention?” Eva said. “Anyway, I thought there was something familiar about him. It was bugging me until I realized I’d seen him before. On television.” She said the last part very dramatically.
“Really? What show?” I asked.
“The Terrible Tundra,” she replied.
“You loved that show,” I said. The Terrible Tundra was a television show that Eva and I watched when we were about eight. It featured Jeremy Terrible, a kid who lived in the Alaskan tundra with a dog and a few survival skills.
“His name is Edgar Love,” Eva continued. “He and his mom just moved to Nightshade, to open a bath and body shop.”
“But the guy we met had black hair,” I pointed out. “The kid who played Jeremy was blond.”
She shrugged. “Ever hear of hair dye?”
“I thought Jeremy was played by someone named Ed Murphy or something like that?”
“Stage name,” she said. “I’m sure it’s him.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure?”
“I cornered him at school today and he finally admitted it. But he promised me not to tell anyone, so you can’t say a word.”
“I won’t,” I told her. “How did he take the news that he’d been spotted?”
“Not very well,” she replied. “He’s kind of a jerk. Disappointing, really.”
I knew how she felt.